Crimson Devil

Louisiana, 1955. Rose is eighteen and shimmering with wants - red lipstick, a plastic rose in her hair, a future somewhere far past the cotton and the church pews. She has a good man who adores her, a best friend at her side, and a whole life laid out like a road she hasn't walked yet.

Then, beneath a tree at the edge of a party, a stranger lights a cigar and looks at her.

He is beautiful, the way a blade is beautiful. Crimson jacket, amber eyes, a scent underneath the smoke that Rose can't place - until she can.

Rose knows what he is. She wants him anyway.

As the bodies mount and the church begs its daughters to be careful - you will know him by his smile, he may even look like a friend - Rose is drawn deeper into a courtship that feels less like falling in love, and more like falling, period! Somewhere beneath the charm is a hunger old as sin, and Rose is about to learn just how far a girl will go for a man who might be the last thing she ever wants.

Some doors, once opened, never close all the way. Rose is still telling this story sixty years later - which means, however it ends; she gets to tell it. Not everyone she danced with that summer can say the same.